Europe, Rashysm and Russian-Ukrainian War: Challenges for Europe

On July 11-12th, Vilnius will host the NATO summit. This is an event of extraordinary importance during the Russian-Ukrainian war. As a Ukrainian historian, I would like to briefly discuss the role of Europe for Ukraine and share my vision of Europe as a civilization that is helping Ukraine to combat Russia and is simultaneously passing through many mental transformations right now.

For Ukraine Russian massacres, elimination of Ukrainian identity, Russification, and deportations began not the last year but 300 years ago. As Ukrainians bitterly count every day, it is a certain day of the ten-year war that lasts for centuries. But this war is the first time since 1709 when Atlantic-European civilization has not left Ukraine alone to combat Russian imperialism, like in was the case during the whole XXth century (1917–1921 with some exceptions, 1933, 1945–end of 1950s) and even in the XXIst (2014).

So Europe has been giving a helping hand to its former member of the European community. In response, Ukrainians are rethinking their self-identification in the conditions of the Russian-Ukrainian war. During this war of totalitarianism against free Europe, it is this notion of Europe that is one of the symbols that inspire the Ukrainian nation to resist the Russian occupants. According to the poll of Kyiv International Institute of Sociology from May 2023, 92 % of Ukrainians want Ukraine to become a member of the EU, and 89 % – of NATO.

How Ukraine was extorted from the European community? At the beginning of the XVIIIth century Ukrainian-Swedish military union lost the Poltava battle to Muscovite tsar Peter. It was Peter who in 1721 declared himself an emperor, and Moscow princedom – a Russian empire. By the way, by doing this he witnessed the stealing of the title and heritage of “Rus” from Ukraine as an ancestor of Kyiv Rus of the IXth – XIIIth centuries. Since then, having lost its independence and its place in the European community, Ukrainian culture and nation-building projects incorporated and demonstrated various images and notions of Europe.

Many European states got a chance for state- and nation-building after the collapse of the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian empires in the 1910s. But the Ukrainian state, fighting with the Russians for 5 years, in 1917–1921, was not able to resist their one million army. 100 years later, in 2022, the Russians threw one million army again to conquer independent Ukraine and to break the whole world order.

Having included Ukraine again in the Russian (then–Soviet) empire in the beginning of the 1920s, Russia returned back to conquer and destroy Europe. Both Stalin and Hitler had prepared a partition of Europe. As a result, some European countries lost their independence due to WWII and afterward. Despite communist experiments, repressions, and deportations, these countries kept their memory of being part of European space, history, law, and culture, not the Russian Soviet territory of terror and social engineering. It was this realization of them as part of the European family that helped these countries to return back to Europe at the end of the 1980s.

Let me now point at some important, to my mind, components of European identity that had already contributed to a reunion of Europe after the collapse of communism. Also, they can help European civilization remain united to resist Russian barbarianism and to combat it together with Ukraine.
Why unity of Europe is of vital importance now? Because the Russian ideologists (V. Surkov, O. Duhin, etc.) and V. Putin himself are openly declaring their intention to undermine the unity of Atlantic-European civilization; to revise the results of the First and Second World wars and the collapse of the USSR, openly threatening first of all to the Baltic States as the former Soviet republics; to destroy international law and world order based on rules, procedures, and institutions. And the Russian-Ukrainian war, in their system of coordinates, is one of the tools to reach their goal.

The Atlantic-European civilization and the Russian state are the opposites, a civilization and anti-civilization. Europe had grown on the Greek-Roman law and philosophy heritage. Thanks to this rule of princes, kings, and emperors were never so severe, cruel, and repressive as in the Russian state since its appearance as the Moscow princedom that was controlled by the Asian Golden Horde till the end of the XVth century. In Ukraine mental, outlook and legal heritage were based on Kyiv Rus statehood; Orthodoxy through ties with the Byzantine empire; Western Europe through a network of dynastical marriages; and later – as part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Rzech Pospolyta (with an essential component of Middle Age system of town privileges and self-administration – Magdeburg Law) and European legal system (Lithuanian statutes).

Renaissance added to the value of human beings in Europe (and Ukraine) – while the Russian state had never experienced this epoch. Thus European states were gradually developing toward a social contract theory aspiring to secure safe and happy life for their citizens. The Russian state-building was moving in the opposite direction. It developed ideas of total control of life, world messianism (the concept “Moscow is the third Rome”), and Russian chauvinism.

So European respect of human life and rights, democratic procedures and institutions, free press, and law comprise the foundation of European civilization that gives hope for the defeat of the Russian totalitarianism called now racism. This is the first tool suggested for keeping, developing, and improvement of the European community.

It is the legal procedure that must be used to finally condemn Russian totalitarianism and punish war criminals. In 1945 the Аtlantic-European civilization placated the Soviet evil with some European countries instead of punishing it for its crimes. The West put Nazism to trial, condemning it for taking the life of 6 million Jews during 6 years of WWII.

But at that time the free world did not condemn Soviet totalitarianism that starved to death 4 million Ukrainians (13% of the whole population in Ukraine!) during 6 months of the Holodomor, and in total organized 3 famines in Ukraine with at least 5,5 million of victims (not mentioning repressions, sociocides, and deportations). Only after Ukraine gained its independence in 1991, 32 countries recognized Holodomor as a genocide, of them 15 and the EU – during the open-scale Russian-Ukrainian war in 2022–2023.

Some episodes of the Soviet past were legally condemned by some countries. Lithuania, for instance, in 2019 managed to get a decision of the European Court of Human Rights of the Soviet policy against partisans as genocide.

Cold War was the first step to punishing Soviet totalitarianism for its crimes. But then the West believed the Soviet and Russian leaders and their declarations to “build a democratic Russia”. Instead of condemnation and punishment for the wars of Afghanistan, Moldova, Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, and Ukraine in 2014, the free world was trying to placate again and continue business as usual. Warnings of the Baltic States, Poland, and certain intellectuals about the rising totalitarian Russian monster were ignored.

So, hard work toward documenting, bringing to the courts, and punishing war criminals will secure European democratic values and international law. And Europe moves in this direction: on March 23rd, 2023 the European Council supported an idea of creation of the Tribunal for Russia. On July 3rd, 2023 the International Center for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine began its work in Hague.

The second tool for strengthening the European community is the rising of self-awareness of Russia. Most historians have an idea of how many wars the Russian state had launched in the past. For instance, only Ukrainian historians count 30 wars with Russia starring from the Xth century. Knowledge of Russian history, especially its military component, and imperialism, must become part of European identity. This explains that the war is a normal state for Russian citizens and the state. Even worse, the war is a national idea, a sense, and a form of Russia’s existence, according to the Ukrainian historian Larysa Yakubova. Militarization of society, education, and identity has been on the march for the last two decades (here we take the post-1991 period only). Europeans also have to know more about contemporary rashysm, its reasons, goals, components, and consequences.

At the same time, the back of discovering Russian totalitarianism is rediscovering of Ukraine. The Russian propaganda had achieved much in humiliation of Ukrainian nation, state, people, language, and culture, depicting Ukraine as an inferior backward grey zone. The Soviet state skilfully hid the traces of its crimes, depriving people of memory and the right to commemorate the victims of the terror and genocide (like with Holdoomor, when the Soviet state for half of the century denied the famine and accused everyone who dared to speak about in being a Nazi). The Russian state has basically imposed imperial optics, forcing everyone who wants to know more about Ukraine, to look through Russian imperial distortion of everything Ukrainian.
It was this non-knowledge of Ukrainian history that allowed many Europeans to believe in the persecution of the Russian language in Ukraine, Nazis, and “horrible Ukrainian nationalists” who kill every Russian-speaking they meet. Poor understanding of Ukrainian history and realities made it possible for the Western world to agree with the Russian aggression in 2014 because of this imperial optics: supposedly Russian “eternal” right to Ukraine and Ukraine as a “failed state”.

The third tool to make Europe stronger is understanding that the Russian concept of officially declared soft power is basically a concept of transformation of everything into a weapon. Russian “great” culture and literature (Ukrainians ironically say “tolstoevsky” (Tolstoy+Dostoevsky) is an excuse for the Russians to genocide Ukrainians because as they say, we do not have such highly developed culture and literature. The Russian language is the reason for the Russians to defend their Russian-speaking “fellow citizens” in various countries. The war in 2014 began under the slogan of defense of Russian-speaking on Donbas. “Great Russian culture”, sport, economy, church, food – everything is used as a weapon against Atlantic-European civilization to confirm that Russian “greatness” in many spheres justify the genocidal war in Ukraine and interference in the inner policy of many countries. Russian culture and literature are chauvinistic. Let’s finally de-sacralize this faked “greatness” – and we will see naked military chauvinistic empire. Keep also in mind the Russian language, literature, and culture are treated by the Russian state as a channel for spreading of “Ruski Mir” (constitutes the ideological foundation of rashysm) to the whole world to secure Russia’s world domination.

The fourth tool is the strengthening of the personality of a free citizen of the free world. The enemy of rashysm is a free human being and a responsible citizen because only such type of personality can resist Russian anti-civilization that is based on a totalitarian type of post-Soviet personality. European free citizens must be a person with a solid national and European identity, protected by the state in the sphere of law. This European has to have support as a small and middle business. Financial security, freedom of self-realization, a high level of education, and strong identities are safety protectors against the formation of a totalitarian type of personality. In order to resist Russian propaganda, critical thinking, and intellectual reflections have to be used. Humanness must remain a core of a European citizen – and acceptance of Ukrainian refugees by the European countries is just one of the example of this feature.

Humanitarian education; schools as the centers of freedom of speech with respect to every child; history memory policy and culture comprise intellectual infrastructure that contributes to European identity. Historical lessons must be finally learned. In short, Europeans say “never again” regarding the war. The Russians instead scream “We can repeat” – and they repeat mass graves, filtration camps, torment rooms, rapes of babies, girls, and women, deportations, the bombing of civilians and civilian objects, and ecocide. They want to spread Russian GULAG to the whole free world. Not accidentally it is GULAG that arises in the propagandistic videos about the war in Ukraine. It is GULAG that is mentioned as one of the weapons to finally solve the question with the Ukrainian resistance to Russian aggression.

The fifth tool is to fight the Russian fakes. “Living in truth” (V. Havel’s concept of departure from the Soviet totalitarian past) for the Russian state means the end of rashysm, the war, and the empire. To escape this, truth is replaced with lie. Lie unites the Russian society with the authorities, covering any holes in outlook. Lie helps to consume propaganda and to trust with no questions instead, taking away moral restraints as well as the responsibility of a citizen for his actions and allowing the killing of Ukrainians in their homes and on their land.

These five tools might help keep Europe as a space of law, rules, institutes, and institutions – the opposite of rashysm that wants to destroy the free world and its values. Political culture must be increased so that no chauvinist and populist forces in a European country could get power. Russians jeer at and hate Europeans, Americans, civilized values, democracy, law, independence, the history of other countries, and world order in general but want to use all benefits created by civilization. They should not have access to these benefits unless they stop sharing totalitarian identities and the genocidal war of their state.

I see Europe as a strong intellectual, democratic, liberal, military, moral, ethical, and empathetic community that uses given above tools and actively participates in forcing the Russian state and citizens to pay for the war in financial, legal, and moral dimensions. A strong united Europe will combat Russian imperialism!

For our freedom and yours!